


It Hurts, But It Works

by amorremanet



Series: the Hawthorne Center 'verse [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: 30 days of drabbles, Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Community: hc_bingo, Eating Disorders, Ficlet, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-02
Updated: 2012-09-02
Packaged: 2017-11-13 10:30:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,277
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/502545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amorremanet/pseuds/amorremanet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>If Dean weren't so weak, they wouldn't be here in the first place. If he weren't so stupid and useless, then maybe he would've been good at something without needing to starve to get there.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	It Hurts, But It Works

**Author's Note:**

> 30 days of drabbles entry for September first. Prompts used are: "tremble" for 30 days of drabbles, and, "severe / life-threatening illness" for hc_bingo.

It's been over twenty-four hours—Dean hasn't eaten anything since yesterday's lunch—but looking across the table at Mom and Dad, at the enormous bowl of chicken noodle soup in front of Mom, he feels the familiar, burning urge to go deep-throat his toothbrush.

Not just prod at himself until he throws up. Dean wants to dig and jab his toothbrush into the back of his throat like a fucking sword. He wants to do that until he pukes up bile and water and the weird-ass green tea concoction that Amanda "queen cheerleader" Heckerling swears will boost anybody's metabolism, work better than any damn diet pill, and never go away since it'll always be legal because it's just tea.

Dean slouches underneath his parents' gazes, under how Mom looks so close to tears and Dad's so tired, so worried that he can't even manage to look angry. He sighs, folds his hands over his coffeecup, drags his thumb up and down the hot ceramic. His body is a fucking traitor and he hates it. Yesterday, it was giving him the head-spinning, weak-kneed feeling—making him crumple over and pass out in the middle of running laps at track practice after school—regardless of how he ate way too much at lunch.

(Never mind that it was just baby carrots and celery sticks. That's irrelevant. Dean still ate way too much.)

Today, his stupid, traitor body's making his stomach growl like a mother bear, just at the scent of any food he used to love but can't remember even liking. And he can't eat them—not the bacon, not the cheese, not the burgers, not even Mom's homemade soup—none of them is on his list of acceptable foods. None of them's even close to it. Parts of the soup are acceptable on their own, but the whole concoction is too much for Dean. Which means he can't eat it or anything else Mom's made, not unless he wants to ruin everything he's worked so hard to get.

And he _would_ ruin everything. Dean knows he would. Because it's not enough—whatever little bit of progress Dean's made, it's not enough. His clothes hang off of him, his wrists and hipbones jut out hard against his skin, his collarbone might start collecting water soon enough, and none of it's enough. Everything's still unmanageable—all the talk about standardized tests and college applications and what Dean's supposed to do with himself after high school, all the expectations (take care of your brother, get good grades, get into a school that makes your parents proud, have a career, have a life)—and everything's still looming over Dean, insurmountable.

But it'll all be perfect if he fixes the one thing that he has any kind of power over. He can't guarantee that he didn't fuck up his finals—he busted his ass in studying, but he probably still sucked on them—but he can fix this one simple thing. Everything will be fine if Dean just fixes his body.

"Dean, come on… It's not that hard, is it? Just… eat something already. We'll even whip up a salad, if that's what you want, but you've gotta eat something." Dad sighs as he says this, and something thuds on the table. Makes Dean gasp and makes him want to leap into action—but all he can manage is slowly raising his eyes from the table. Turning them to where Dad leans over, resting on both elbows.

The way he's sitting, the way he bends his arms, flexes them and shows off the hard muscle that Dad's still rocking, even after so long out of the Marines, so long with his major work-out being fixing cars and lifting weights when he feels like it. And it's not fair—Dean used to want that kind of muscle, before he realized he could never get it, that it'd make him look enormous and hulking and disgusting anyway.

Dean huffs into his coffee. He shakes his head and mutters that he can't eat—he's not hungry anyway. Doesn't matter that that's a blatant lie—doesn't matter that Dean would eat the kitchen's ugly, fruit-patterned wallpaper if he could, or that he'd give up and gorge himself on a damn bacon cheeseburger if not for the voice in his head reminding him not to fuck up everything. If he weren't so weak, they wouldn't be here in the first place. If he weren't so stupid and useless, then maybe he would've been good at something without needing to starve to get there.

"Sweetie," Mom sighs, voice barely above a whisper (which clatters through the air like breaking glass anyway). "We've spoken to Doctor Roberts, down at the hospital? And to Doctor Turner—you know, your Uncle Bobby's therapist friend? And we don't want to do this, but…"

"If they're not telling you that it's useless to argue about this, then they're wrong." Dean licks at his chapped lips—not that it really helps. His tongue's so dry lately, even after drinking his coffee. Even after all the water he had earlier. "I just don't get what's so hard to understand? It's just a _diet_ —"

"No, it's damn well _not_." Dad's voice trembles like thunder, like it ought to make the whole house quake with how much he's _pleading_ —with the fact that he's pleading in the first place. "What's so goddamn hard about seeing that it's _not_? Son, you're _sick_ and I won't allow you to—"

"John, please. Remember what Rufus said." Mom stands and gets a pamphlet from a pile of papers on the countertop. She slides it across the table to Dean and before he can even read the title, she says, "Hawthorne's a residential program around St. Louis, Sweetheart. It usually lasts two to four months, so with summer coming up… You won't miss any school. You can tell your friends you're going to summer camp."

"Yeah, because they totally missed me wiping out yesterday. Because nobody's talking about it and nobody's gonna talk about me like I'm a freak if I go through with this. I'm not going to this place. I'm just not," Dean says as though his word is final.

And because it's not, Dad tells him, "Like Hell you're not."

Mom sighs, sinking back into her chair. "You have an appointment with Doctor Roberts tomorrow morning. She's going to help us go over the pre-admission forms… And we have an appointment for an intake assessment the Friday after school lets out."

Dean groans—he opens his mouth to protest and tell his parents that they can't fucking do this to him—and that's when Dean sees him. That's when he looks up from the pamphlet, just in time to see Sammy cowering by the doorway into the kitchen, darting out of the house and into the backyard. Goddammit—Dean could fucking kick himself. This was never meant to screw up his little brother. It was only supposed to make Dean better. He's put all of himself into accomplishing this end—into getting better, into becoming the son that his parents deserve, the brother that Sammy—as he looks back down to the pamphlet, to the purple paper with its yellow letters spelling out _Hawthorne Addiction And Eating Disorder Recovery Center_ , Dean wants to cry, but it feels like too much effort.

He's tried so hard. He's given so much to just making himself better—to at least making sure that he doesn't _suck_ so much as a human being. So why is he still this mass of flesh and imperfections? Why hasn't anything he's done to himself fucking _worked_ yet?


End file.
